Shadowhunter Chronicles Excerpts and Extras
by XxNatalieSkye169xX
Summary: I found these on Cassandra Clare's website, and thought that they should be shared to those who havent checked it out. Enjoy! DISCLAIMER: I OWN NONE OF THIS. THAT SADLY INCLUDES THE FACT THAT I DO NOT OWN JACE :( M only to be safe.
1. Becoming Sebastian Verlac

BECOMING SEBASTIAN VERLAC

It was a very small bar, on a narrow sloping street in a walled town full of shadows. Jonathan Morgenstern had been sitting at the bar for at least a quarter of an hour, finishing a leisurely drink, before he got to his feet and slipped down the long, rickety flight of wooden stairs to the club. The sound of the music seemed to be trying to push its way up through the steps as he made his way downward: he could feel the wood vibrating under his feet.

The place was filled with writhing bodies and obscuring smoke. It was the kind of place demons prowled. That made it the kind of place that demon hunters frequented.

And an ideal location for someone who was hunting a demon hunter.

Colored smoke drifted through the air, smelling vaguely acidic. There were long mirrors all along the walls of the club. He could see himself as he moved across the room. A slender figure in black, with his father's hair, white as snow. It was humid down here in the club, airless and hot, and his t-shirt was stuck to his back with sweat. A silver ring glittered on his right hand as he scanned the room for his prey.

There he was, at the bar, as if he was trying to blend in with the mundanes even though he was invisible to them.

A boy. Maybe seventeen.

A Shadowhunter.

Sebastian Verlac.

Jonathan ordinarily had little interest in anyone his own age — if there was anything duller than other people, it was other adolescents — but Sebastian Verlac was different. Jonathan had chosen him, carefully and specifically. Chosen him the way one might choose an expensive and custom-tailored suit.

Jonathan strolled over to him, taking his time and taking the boy's measure. He had seen photographs, of course, but people always looked different in person. Sebastian was tall — the same height as Jonathan himself, and with the same slender build. His clothes looked like they would fit Jonathan perfectly. His hair was dark — Jonathan would have to dye his own, which was annoying, but not impossible. His eyes were black, too, and his features, though irregular, came together pleasingly: he had a friendly charisma that was attractive. He looked like it was easy for him to trust, easy to smile.

He looked like a fool.

Jonathan came up to the bar and leaned against it. He turned his head, allowing the other boy to recognize that he could see him. "_Bonjour_."

"Hello," Sebastian replied, in English, the language of Idris, though his was tinged faintly with a French accent. His eyes were narrow. He looked very startled to be seen at all, and as if he was wondering what Sebastian might be: fellow Shadowhunter, or a warlock with a sign that didn't show?

_Something wicked this way comes_, Jonathan thought. _And you don't even know it_.

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours," he suggested, and smiled. He could see himself smiling in the grimy mirror over the bar. He knew the way it lit up his face, made him almost irresistible. His father had trained him for years to smile like that, like a human being.

Sebastian's hand tightened on the edge of the bar. "I don't . . ."

Jonathan smiled wider and turned his right hand over to show the _Voyance _rune on the back of it. The breath went out of Sebastian in relief and he beamed with delighted recognition: as if any Shadowhunter was a comrade and a potential friend.

"Are you on your way to Idris, too?" Jonathan asked, very professional, as if he was in regular touch with the Clave. Protecting the innocent, he projected to the world and Sebastian in particular. Can't get enough of that!

"I am," Sebastian replied. "Representing the Paris Institute. I'm Sebastian Verlac, by the way."

"Ah, a Verlac. A fine old family." Jonathan accepted his hand, and shook it firmly. "Andrew Blackthorn," he said easily. "The Los Angeles Institute, originally, but I've been studying in Rome. I thought I'd come overland to Alicante. See the sights."

He'd researched the Blackthorns, a large family, and knew they and the Verlacs had not been in the same city for ten years. He was certain he would have no problem answering to an assumed name: he never did. His real name was Jonathan, but he had never felt particularly attached to it: perhaps because he had always known that it was not his name alone.

The other Jonathan, being raised not so far away, in a house just like his, visited byhis father. Daddy's little angel.

"Haven't seen another Shadowhunter in ages," Sebastian continued — he had been talking, but Jonathan had forgotten to pay attention to him. "Funny to run into you here. My lucky day."

"Must be," Jonathan murmured. "Though not entirely chance, of course. The reports of a Eluthied demon lurking about this place, I assume you've heard them as well?"

Sebastian smiled and took a last swallow from his glass, setting it down on the bar. "After we kill the thing, we should have a celebratory drink."

Jonathan nodded, and tried to look as if he was very focused on searching the room for demons. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, like brother warriors. It was so easy it was almost boring: all he'd had to do was show up, and here was Sebastian Verlac like a lamb pushing its throat on a blade. Who _trusted_ other people like that? Wanted to be their friend so easily?

He had never played nicely with others. Of course, he had not ever been given the opportunity: his father had kept him and the other Jonathan apart. A child with demon blood and a child with angel blood: raise both boys as yours and see who makes daddy proud.

The other boy had failed a test when he was younger, and been sent away. Jonathan knew that much. He had passed every test their father had ever set for him. Maybe he had passed them all a little too well, too flawlessly, unfazed by the isolation chamber and the animals, the whip or the hunt. Jonathan had discerned a shadow in Father's eyes now and then, one that was either grief or doubt.

Though what did he have to be grieved over? Why should he doubt? Was Jonathan not the perfect warrior? Was he not everything his father had created him to be?

Human being were so puzzling.

Jonathan had never liked the idea of the other Jonathan, of Father having another boy, one who made Father smile sometimes at the thought of him without a shadow in his eyes.

Jonathan had cut one of his practise dummies off at the knees once, and spent a pleasant day strangling it and disembowelling it, slitting it from neck to navel. When his father had asked why he'd cut off part of the legs, he had told him that he wanted to see what it was like to kill a boy who was just his own size.

"I forget, you'll have to excuse me," said Sebastian, who was turning out to be annoyingly chatty. "How many are there in your family?"

"Oh, we're a big one," Jonathan replied. "Eight in total. I have four brothers and three sisters."

The Blackthorns really were eight: Jonathan's research had been thorough. He couldn't imagine what that would be like, so many people, such untidiness. Jonathan had a blood sister, too, although they had never met.

Father had told him about his mother running off when Jonathan was a baby she was pregnant again, inexplicably weepy and miserable because she had some sort of objection to her child being improved. But she'd run away too late: Father had already seen to it that Clarissa would have angelic powers.

Only a few weeks ago, Father had met Clarissa for the first time, and on their second encounter Clarissa had proven she knew how to use her power as well. She had sent Father's ship to the bottom of the ocean.

Once he and Father had taken down and transformed the Shadowhunters, laid waste to their pride and their city, Father said that Mother, the other Jonathan and Clarissa would be coming to live with them.

Jonathan despised his mother, who had apparently been such a pathetic weakling that she'd run away from him when he was a baby. And his only interest in the other Jonathan was to prove how superior he was: Father's real son, by blood, and with the strength of demons and chaos in that blood as well.

But he was interested in Clarissa.

Clarissa had never chosen to leave him. She had been taken away and been forced to grow up in the midst of mundanes, of all disgusting things. She must have always known she was made of different stuff from everyone around her, meant for utterly different things, power and strangeness crackling beneath her skin.

She must have felt like the only creature like her in all the world.

She had angel in her, like the other Jonathan, not the infernal blood that ran through his veins. But Jonathan was very much his father's son as well as anything else: he was like Father made stronger, tempered by the fires of hell. Clarissa was Father's real daughter too, and who knew what strange brew the combination of Father's blood and Heaven's power had formed to run through Clarissa's veins? She might not be very different from Jonathan himself.

The thought excited him in a way he had never been excited before. Clarissa was hissister; she belonged to no one else. She was his. He knew it, because although he did not dream often—that was a human thing—after Father had told him about his sister sinking the ship, he had dreamed of her.

Jonathan dreamed of a girl standing in the sea with hair like scarlet smoke coiling over her shoulders, winding and unwinding in the untameable wind. Everything was stormy darkness, and in the raging sea were pieces of wreckage that had once been a boat and bodies floating face down. She looked down on them with cool green eyes and was not afraid.

Clarissa had done that, wreaked destruction like that, like he would have. In the dream, he was proud of her. His little sister.

In the dream, they were laughing together at all the beautiful ruin around them. They were standing suspended in the sea, it couldn't hurt them, destruction was their element. Clarissa was looking down as she laughed, trailing her moonlight-white hands in the water. When she lifted up her hands they were dark, dripping: he realized that the seas were all blood.

Jonathan had woken from his dream still laughing.

When the time was right, Father had said, they would be together, all of them. Jonathan had to wait.

But he was not very good at waiting.

"You have the oddest look on your face," Sebastian Verlac said, shouting above the beat of the music, bright and jagged in Jonathan's ears.

Jonathan leaned over, spoke softly and precisely into Sebastian's ear. "Behind you," he said. "Demon. Four o'clock."

Sebastian Verlac turned and the demon, in the shape of a girl with a cloud of dark hair, stepped hastily away from the boy it was talking to and began sliding away through the crowd. Jonathan and Sebastian followed it, out a side door with SORTIE DE SECOURS written across it in cracked letters of red and white.

The door led to an alley, which the demon was swiftly running down, nearly disappearing.

Jonathan jumped, launching himself at the brick wall opposite, and used the force of his rebound to arrow over the demon's head. He twisted in midair, runed blade in hand, hearing it whistle through the air. The demon froze, staring at him. Already the mask of a girl's face was beginning to slip, and Jonathan could see the features behind it: clustered eyes like a spider's, a tusked mouth, open in surprise. None of it disgusted him. The ichor than ran in their veins, ran in his.

Not that that inspired, mercy, either. Grinning at Sebastian over the demon's shoulder, he slashed out with his blade, It cut the demon open as he'd once cut open the dummy, neck to navel. A bubbling scream rent the alley as the demon folded in on itself and disappeared, leaving on a few drops of black blood splattered on the stones.

"By the Angel," Sebastian Verlac whispered.

He was staring at Jonathan over the blood and the emptiness between them, and his face was white. For a moment Jonathan was almost pleased that he had the sense to be afraid.

But no such luck. Sebastian Verlac remained a fool to the end.

"You were amazing!" Sebastian exclaimed, his voice shaken but impressed. "I've never seen anyone move that fast! _Alors_, you have got to teach me that move. By the Angel," he went on. "I've never seen anything like what you just did."

"I'd love to help you," Jonathan said. "But unfortunately I've got to get going soon. My father needs me, you see. He has plans. And he simply can't do without me."

Sebastian looked absurdly disappointed. "Oh come, you can't go now," he coaxed. "Hunting with you was so much fun, _mon pote_. We have to do this again some time."

"I'm afraid," Jonathan told him, fingering the hilt of his weapon, "that won't be possible."

Sebastian looked so surprised when he was killed. It made Jonathan laugh, blade in hand and Sebastian's throat opening beneath it, hot blood spilling onto his fingers.

It wouldn't do to have Sebastian's body found at an inconvenient time and the whole game ruined, so Jonathan dragged the body as if he was carrying a drunken friend home through the streets.

It was not very far at all to a little bridge, delicate as green filigree or a dead child's moldy, fragile bones, over the river. Jonathan heaved the corpse over the side and watched it hit the rushing black waters with a splash.

The body sank without a trace, and Sebastian forgot it before it had even sunk all the way. He saw the curled fingers, bobbing in the currents as if restored to life and begging for help or at least answers, and thought of his dream. His sister, and a sea of blood. Water had splashed up where the body went down, some of it splattering his sleeve. Baptizing him, with a new name. He was Sebastian now.

He strolled along the bridge to the old part of the city, where there were electric bulbs masquerading as gas lanterns, more toys for tourists. He was headed toward the hotel where Sebastian Verlac had been staying; he had scoped it out before coming to the bar, and knew he could scramble up through the window and retrieve the other boy's belongings. And after that, a bottle of cheap hair dye and . . .

A group of girls in cocktail dresses passed him, angling their gazes, and one, silvery skirt skimming her thighs, gave him a direct look and a smile.

He fell in with the party.

"_Comment tu t'appelles, beau gosse_?" another girl asked him, her voice lightly slurred._What's your name, pretty boy?_

"Sebastian," he answered smoothly, with not a second's hesitation. That was who he was from now on, who his father's plans required him to be, who he needed to be to walk the path that led to victory and Clarissa. "Sebastian Verlac."

He looked to the horizon, and thought of the glass towers of Idris, thought of them enveloped in shadow, flame and ruin. He thought of his sister waiting for him, out there in the wide world.

He smiled.

He thought he was going to enjoy being Sebastian.


	2. Because it is Bitter

The scene that takes place during pages 170-174 of City of Ashes, in the chapter The Seelie Court, here from Jace's point of view. I even gave it a name — "Because It Is Bitter." Because boy, is Jace bitter here.

_"But I like it_

_Because it is bitter,_

_And because it is my heart."_ — Stephen Crane

"I know that I will not leave my sister here in your Court," said Jace, "and since there is nothing to be learned from either her or myself, perhaps you could do us the favor of releasing her?"

The Queen smiled. It was a beautiful, terrible smile. The Queen was a lovely woman; she had that inhuman loveliness that faeries did, that was more like the loveliness of hard crystal than the beauty of a human. The Queen did not look any particular age: she could have been sixteen or forty-five. Jace supposed there were those who would have found her attractive — people had died for love of the Queen — but she gave him a cold feeling in his chest, as if he'd swallowed ice water too fast. "What if I told you she could be freed by a kiss?"

It was Clary who replied, bewildered: "You want Jace to kiss you?"

As the Queen and Court laughed, the icy feeling in Jace's chest intensified. Clary didn't understand faeries, he thought. He'd tried to explain, but there was no explaining, not really. Whatever the Queen wanted from them, it wasn't a kiss from him; she could have demanded that without all this show and nonsense. What she wanted was to see them pinned and struggling like butterflies. It was something immortality did to you, he'd often thought: dulled your senses, your emotions; the sharp, uncontrollable, pitiable responses of human beings were to faeries like fresh blood to a vampire. Something living. Something they didn't have themselves.

"Despite his charms," the Queen said, flicking a glance toward Jace — her eyes were green, like Clary's, but not like Clary's at all — "that kiss will not free the girl."

"I could kiss Meliorn," suggested Isabelle, shrugging.

The Queen shook her head slowly. "Nor that. Nor any one of my Court."

Isabelle threw up her hands; Jace wanted to ask her what she'd expected — kissing Meliorn wouldn't have bothered her, so obviously the Queen wouldn't care about it. He supposed it had been nice of her to offer, but Iz, at least, ought to know better. She'd had dealings with faeries before.

Maybe it wasn't just knowing the way the Fair Folk thought, Jace wondered. Maybe it was knowing how people who enjoyed cruelty for the sake of cruelty thought. Isabelle was thoughtless, and sometimes vain, but she wasn't cruel. She tossed her dark hair back and scowled. "I'm not kissing any of you," she said firmly. "Just so it's official."

"That hardly seems necessary," said Simon, stepped forward. "If a kiss is all . . ."

He took a step toward Clary, who didn't move away. The ice in Jace's chest turned into liquid fire; he clenched his hands at his sides as Simon took Clary gently by the arms and looked down into her face. She rested her hands on Simon's waist, as if she'd done it a million times before. Maybe she had, for all he knew. He knew Simon loved her; he'd known it since he'd seen them together in that stupid coffee shop, the other boy practically choking on getting the words "I love you" out of his mouth while Clary looked around the room, restlessly alive, her green eyes darting everywhere._She's not interested in you, mundane boy, _he'd thought with satisfaction_. Get lost. _And then been surprised he'd thought it. What difference did it make to him what this girl he barely knew thought?

That seemed like a lifetime ago. She wasn't some girl he barely knew anymore: she was Clary. She was the one thing in his life that mattered more than anything else, and watching Simon put his hands on her, wherever he wanted to, made him feel at once sick and faint and murderously angry. The urge to stalk up and rip the two of them apart was so strong he could barely breathe.

Clary glanced back at him, her red hair slipping over her shoulder. She looked concerned, which was bad enough. He couldn't stand the thought that she might feel sorry for him. He looked away fast, and caught the eye of the Seelie Queen, glimmering with delight: now _this_ was what she was after. Their pain, their agony.

"No," said the Queen, to Simon, in a voice like the soft slice of a knife. "That is not what I want either."

Simon stepped away from Clary, reluctantly. Relief pounded through Jace's veins like blood, drowning out what his friends were saying. For a moment all he cared about was that he wasn't going to have to watch Clary kiss Simon. Then Clary seemed to swim into focus: she was very pale, and he couldn't help wondering what she was thinking. Was she disappointed not to be kissed by Simon? Relieved as he was? He thought of Simon kissing her hand earlier than day and shoved the memory away viciously, still staring at his sister. _Look up, _he thought._ Look at me. If you love me, you'll look at me._

She crossed her arms over her chest, the way she did when she was cold or upset. But she didn't look up. The conversation went on around them: who was going to kiss who, what was going to happen. Hopeless rage rose up in Jace's chest, and as usual, found its escape in a sarcastic comment.

"Well, I'm not kissing the mundane," he said. "I'd rather stay down here and rot."

"Forever?" said Simon. His eyes were big and dark and serious. "Forever's an awfully long time."

Jace looked back at those eyes. Simon was probably a good person, he thought. He loved Clary and he wanted to take care of her and make her happy. He'd probably make a spectacular boyfriend. Logically, Jace knew, it was exactly what he ought to want for his sister. But he couldn't look at Simon without wanting to kill someone. "I knew it," he said nastily. "You want to kiss me, don't you?"

"Of course not. But if—"

"I guess it's true what they say. There are no straight men in the trenches."  
"That's atheists, jackass." Simon was bright red. "There are no atheists in the trenches."

It was the Queen who interrupted them, leaning forward so that her white neck and breasts were displayed above the neckline of her low-cut gown. "While this is all very amusing, the kiss that will free the girl is the kiss that she most desires," she said. "Only that and nothing more."

Simon went from red to white. If the kiss that Clary most desired wasn't Simon's, then . . .the way she was looking at Jace, from Jace to Clary, answered that.

Jace's heart started to pound. He met the Queen's eyes with his own. "Why are you doing this?"

"I rather thought I was offering you a boon," she said. "Desire is not always lessened by disgust. Nor can it be bestowed, like a favor, to those most deserving of it. And as my words bind my magic, so you can know the truth. If she doesn't desire your kiss, she won't be free."

Jace felt blood flood into his face. He was vaguely aware of Simon arguing that Jace and Clary were brother and sister, that it wasn't right, but he ignored him. The Seelie Queen was looking at him, and her eyes were like the sea before a deadly storm, and he wanted to say _thank you. Thank you._

And that was the most dangerous thing of all, he thought, as around him his companions argued about whether Clary and Jace had to do this, or what any of them would be willing to do to escape the Court. To allow the Queen to give you something you wanted — truly, truly wanted — was to put yourself in her power. How had she looked at him and known, he wondered? That this was what he thought about, wanted, woke from dreams of, gasping and sweating? That when he thought, really thought, about the fact that he might never get to kiss Clary again, he wanted to die or hurt or bleed so badly he'd go up to the attic and train alone for hours until he was so exhausted he had no choice but to pass out, exhausted. He'd have bruises in the morning, bruises and cuts and scraped skin and if he could have named all his injuries they would have had the same name: _Clary, Clary, Clary._

Simon was still talking, saying something, angry again. "You don't have to do this, Clary, it's a trick—"

"Not a trick," said Jace. The calmness in his own voice surprised him. "A test." He looked at Clary. She was biting her lip, her hand wound in a curl of her hair; the gestures so characteristic, so very much a part of her, they shattered his heart. Simon was arguing with Isabelle now as the Seelie Queen lounged back and watched them like a sleek, amused cat.

Isabelle sounded exasperated. 'Who cares, anyway? It's just a kiss."

"That's right," Jace said.

Clary looked up, then finally, and her wide green eyes rested on him. He moved toward her, and as it always did, the rest of the world fell away until it was just them, as if they stood on a spotlighted stage in an empty auditorium. He put his hand on her shoulder, turning her to face him. She had stopped biting her lip, and her cheeks were flushed, her eyes a brilliant green. He could feel the tension in his own body, the effort of holding back, of not pulling her against him and taking this once chance, however dangerous and stupid and unwise, and kissing her the way he had thought he would never, in his life, be able to kiss her again.

"It's just a kiss," he said, and heard the roughness in his own voice, and wondered if she heard it, too.  
Not that it mattered—there was no way to hide it. It was too much. He had never_wanted_ like this before. There had always been girls. He had asked himself, in the dead of night, staring at the blank walls of his room, what made Clary so different. She was beautiful, but other girls were beautiful. She was smart, but there were other smart girls. She understood him, laughed when he laughed, saw through the defenses he put up to what was underneath. There was no Jace Wayland more real than the one he saw in her eyes when she looked at him.

But still, maybe, he could find all that somewhere else. People fell in love, and lost, and moved on. He didn't know why he couldn't. He didn't know why he didn't even want to. All he knew was that whatever he had to owe to Hell or Heaven for this chance, he was going to make it count.

He reached down and took her hands, winding his fingers with hers, and whispered in her ear. "You can close your eyes and think of England, if you like," he said.

Her eyes fluttered shut, her lashes coppery lines against her pale, fragile skin. "I've never even been to England," she said, and the softness, the anxiety in her voice almost undid him. He had never kissed a girl without knowing she wanted it too, usually more than he did, and this was Clary, and he didn't know what she wanted. He slid his hands up hers, over the sleeves of her damply clinging shirt, to her shoulders. Her eyes were still closed, but she shivered, and leaned into him — barely, but it was permission enough.

His mouth came down on hers. And that was it. All the self-control he'd exerted over the past weeks went, like water crashing through a broken dam. Her arms came up around his neck and he pulled her against him, and she was soft and pliant but surprisingly strong like no one else he'd ever held. His hands flattened against her back, pressing her against him, and she was up on the tips of her toes, kissing him as fiercely as he was kissing her. He flicked his tongue along her lips, opening her mouth under his, and she tasted salt and sweet like faerie water. He clung to her more tightly, knotting his hands in her hair, trying to tell her, with the press of his mouth on hers, all the things he could never say out loud: _I love you; I love you and I don't care that you're my sister; don't be with him, don't want him, don't go with him. Be with me. Want me. Stay with me.  
I don't know how to be without you._

His hands slid down to her waist, and he was pulling her against him, lost in the sensations that spiraled through his nerves and blood and bones, and he had no idea what he would have done or said next, if it would have been something he could never have pretended away or taken back, but he heard a soft hiss of laughter — the Faerie Queen — in his ears, and it jolted him back to reality. He pulled away from Clary before he it was too late, unlocking her hands from around his neck and stepping back. It felt like cutting his own skin open, but he did it.

Clary was staring at him. Her lips were parted, her hands still open. Her eyes were wide. Behind her, Isabelle was gaping at them; Simon looked as if he was about to throw up.

_She's my sister, _Jace thought_. My sister._ But the words meant nothing. They might as well have been in a foreign language. If there had ever been any hope that he could have come to think of Clary as just his sister, this — what had just happened between them — had exploded it into a thousand pieces like a meteorite blasting into the surface of the earth. He tried to read Clary's face — did she feel the same? She looked as if she wanted nothing more than to turn around and run away._ I know you felt it, _he said to her with his eyes, and it was half bitter triumph and half pleading._ I know you felt it, too_. But there was no answer on her face; she wrapped her arms around herself, the way she always did when she was upset, and hugged herself as if she were cold. She glanced away from him.

Jace felt as if his heart was being squeezed by a fist. He whirled on the Queen. "Was that good enough?" he demanded. "Did that entertain you?"

The Queen gave him a look: special and secretive and shared between the two of them. _You warned her about us, _the look seemed to say._ That we would hurt her, break her as you might break a twig between your fingers. But you, who thought you could not be touched — you are the one who has been broken._ "We are quite entertained," she said. "But not, I think, so much as the both of you."


	3. The Act of Falling

**The Act of Falling**

_"Because I can't talk to you," Jace said. "I can't talk to you, I can't be with you, I can't even look at you." —City of Fallen Angels_

Jace will never forget the look on Clary's face after he says it. Shock at first, blanching into pain.

He has hurt her before, never because he wanted to, though he had lashed out in his own blindness. The time she walked in on him kissing Aline and he said every awful thing he could think of as if the mere words themselves might have the power to make her disappear, to send her back where she was safe.

He has always cared more about whether she was safe than anything else. If he didn't, none of this would be happening. Jace wonders if she can see it in his eyes, that terror, the shards of all those dozens of dreams in which he stabbed her or choked her or drowned her and looked down at his hands afterward, wet with her blood.

She backs up a step. There is something in her face, but it isn't fear. It's infinitely worse. She turns, almost tripping in her haste to get away, and rushes out of the club.

For a moment he stands and looks after her. This is exactly what he wanted, a part of his mind screams at him. To drive her away. To keep her safe, away from him.

But the rest of his mind is watching the door slam behind her and seeing the final ruin of all his dreams. It was one thing to push it to this point. It is another to let go forever. Because he knows Clary, and if she goes now, she will not ever come back.

_Come back._

Somehow he is outside the club and the rain is pelting down like gunfire. He sees everything in a single sweep, the way he always has, the way he was trained to do. The white van at the curb, the slant of the street as it curves back toward Greenpoint, the dark opening of an alley behind the bar, and Clary at the corner, about to cross the street and walk out of his life forever.

She yanks her arm out of his when he reaches for her, but when he puts his hand against her back she lets him guide her into the alley. His hand slides across her back to her arm as she whirls to face him — and he can see everything around them again: the wet brick wall behind them, the barred windows, the discarded musical equipment soaking in puddles of rainwater.

And Clary is lifting her face, small and pale, her mascara running in glittery streaks beneath her eyes. Her hair looks dark, pasted to her head. She feels both fragile and dangerous in his grasp, a glass explosive.

She jerks her arm away from his. "If you're planning to apologize, don't bother. I don't want to hear it." He tries to protest, to tell her he only wanted to help Simon, but she is shaking her head, her words like stinging missiles: "And you couldn't tell me? Couldn't text me a single line letting me know where you were? Oh, wait. You couldn't, because you still have my goddamned phone. Give it to me."

He reaches to hand the phone back to her, but he is barely aware of his movements. He wants to say: _No, no, no, I couldn't tell you. I can't tell you. I can't say I'm afraid of hurting you even though I don't want to. I can't say I'm afraid of becoming my father. Your faith in me is the best thing in my life and I can't bear to destroy it. _"—Forgive me —"

Her face goes white, her lipstick bright against her stark skin. "I don't even know what you think I'm supposed to forgive you for. Not loving me any more?"

She moves away from him and stumbles, blindly, and he can't stop himself: he reaches for her. She is delicate and shivering in his arms and they are both soaking wet and he can't stop. Her mouth is part-open, and be brings his own lips down against hers, tasting lipstick and sweet ginger and Clary.

_I love you. _He can't say it, so he tries to tell her with the pressure of his lips and his body and his hands. _I love you, I love you. _His hands are around her waist, lifting her, and he had forgotten: she isn't fragile; she is _strong. _Her fingers are digging into his shoulders, her mouth fierce against his, and his heart is pounding like it's trying to get free of his body as he sets her down on a broken speaker.

_Stop, _his mind is telling him. _Stop, stop, stop. _He forces his hands away from her and places them on the wall, on either side of her head. Only _that_ brings his body closer to hers, and that is a mistake. He can see the pulse slamming in her throat; her lipstick is gone he can't look away from the carnation-pink of her mouth, flushed from kissing, as she breathes: "Why can't you talk to me? Why can't you look at me?"

His heart is pounding as if it wants to leave his body and take up independent residence somewhere else. "Because I love you."

It is the truth, and an inadequate truth at that, but he feels it punch through him with the force of a lie. Her face softens, her eyes widening. Her hands are against him, small and delicate and careful, and he leans into her, breathing the scent of her under the smell of rainwater. "I don't care," he hears himself say. "I'm sick of trying to pretend I can live without you. Don't you understand that? Can't you see it's killing me?"

He is drowning, and it is too late. He reaches for her like an addict reaching hopelessly for the drug he has sworn not to touch again, having decided it is better to burn up in one final blaze than live forever without it.

And the gray world blazes up around him with color as they come together, bodies slamming hard against the wall behind them. The water soaking her dress has made it as slick as motor oil under his fingers. He catches and pulls at her, desire reshaping their bodies with every touch. Her breathing is ragged in his ears, her eyelids half-closed and fluttering. He is touching her skin everywhere he can: her throat, the back of her neck, her collarbones hard under his fingertips, her arms, smooth and slippery. Her hands are on him, too, no shyer than his own, and every touch seems to burn away the rain and the cold.

She is gripping his shoulders when she raises her legs and wraps them around his waist, and he makes a noise he didn't even know he could make. It is too late to go back now. His hands clench involuntarily, and he feels the fabric of her tights rip under his fingers, and he is touching her bare skin. And their kisses taste like rain. And if he wasn't falling before, he is falling now.

He thinks of the Fall, of angels tumbling forever in fire, and Icarus, who had flown too close to the sun. He had thought of the agony of the fall, the terror of it, but never that it might be joyful. Lucifer had not wanted to fall, but neither had he wanted to serve, and as Jace gathered Clary close against him, closer than he had ever thought they could be, he wondered if it was only in the act of falling that one could be truly free.


	4. City of Glass Manor Scene Jace's POV

_Clary heard a sharp pattering noise all around her. For a bewildered moment she thought it had started to rain—then she realized it was rubble and dirt and broken glass: the detritus of the shattered manor being flung down around them like deadly hail._  
_Jace pressed her harder into the ground, his body flat against hers, his heartbeat nearly as loud in her ears as the sound of the manor's subsiding ruins._

Later, Jace would remember little about the destruction of the Manor itself, the shattering apart of the only home he'd known until he was ten years old. He remembered only the fall from the library window, scrambling and rolling down over the grass, and catching hold of Clary, spinning her down and under him, covering her with his body while pieces of the Manor rained down around them like hail.

He could feel her breathing, feel the racing of her heart. He was reminded of his falcon, the way it had curled, blind and trusting, in his hand, the rapidity of its heartbeat. Clary was holding him by the front of the shirt, though he doubt she realized it, her face against his shoulder; he was desperately afraid that there wasn't enough of him, that he couldn't cover her completely, protect her entirely. He imagined boulders as big as elephants tumbling across the rocky ground, ready to crush them both, to crush her. The ground shuddered under them and he pressed harder against her, as if that might help somehow. It was magical thinking, he knew, like closing your eyes so you didn't see the knife coming at you.

The roar had faded. He realized to his surprise that he could hear again: small things, the sound of birds, the air in the trees. Clary's voice, breathless. "Jace — I think you dropped your stele somewhere."

He drew back and stared down at her. She met his gaze steadily In the moonlight her green eyes could have been black. Her red hair was full of dust, her face streaked with soot. He could see the pulse in her throat. He said the first thing that he could think of, dazed, "I don't care. As long as you're not hurt."

"I'm fine." She reached up, her fingers brushing lightly through his hair; his body, super-sensitized by adrenalin, felt it like sparks against his skin. "There's grass — in your hair," she said.

There was worry in her eyes. Worry for him. He remembered the first time he'd kissed her, in the greenhouse, how he'd finally gotten it, finally understood the way someone's mouth against yours could undo you, leave you spinning and breathless. That all the expertise in the world, any techniques you knew or had learned, went out the window when it was the right person you were kissing.

Or the wrong one.

"You shouldn't touch me," he said.

Her hand froze where it was, her palm against his cheek. "Why not?"

"You know why. You saw what I saw, didn't you? The past, the angel. Our parents."

Her eyes darkened. "I saw."

"You know what happened."

"A lot of things happened, Jace —"

"Not for me." The words breathed out on an anguished whisper. "I have demon blood, Clary. Demon blood. You understood that much, didn't you?"

She set her chin. He knew how much she disliked the suggestion that she hadn't understood something, or didn't know it, or didn't need to know it. He loved that about her and it drove him out of his mind. "It doesn't mean anything. Valentine was insane. He was just ranting —"

"And Jocelyn? Was she insane? I know what Valentine was trying to do. He was trying to create hybrids — angel/human, and demon/human. You're the former, Clary, and I'm the latter. I'm part monster. Part everything I've tried so hard to burn out, to destroy."

"It's not true. It can't be. It doesn't make sense—"

"But it does." How could she not understand? It seemed so obvious to him, so basic. "It explains everything."

"You mean it explains why you're such an amazing Shadowhunter? Why you're loyal and fearless and honest and everything demons aren't —"

"It explains," he said, evenly, "why I feel the way I do about you."

Breath hissed between her teeth. "W do you mean?"

"You're my sister," he said, "My sister, my blood, my family. I should want to protect you —" he choked on the words— "to protect you from the sort of boys who want to do to you exactly what I want to do to you."

He heard her breath catch. She was still staring up at him, and though he had expected to see horror in her eyes, some sort of revulsion — for he didn't think he'd ever stated so clearly or so tactlessly exactly how he felt — he saw nothing of the sort. He saw only searching curiosity, as if she were examining the map of some unknown country.

Almost absently, she let her fingers trail down his cheek to his lips, outlining the shape of his mouth with the tip of her index finger, as if she were charting a course. There was wonder in her eyes. He felt his heart turn over and his body, ever traitorous, respond to her touch.

"What is it, exactly, that you want to do to me?" she whispered.

He could not stop himself. He leaned down, his lips grazing her ear: "I could show you."

He felt her tremble, but despite the shiver in her body, her eyes challenged him. The adrenaline in his blood, mixed with desire and the recklessness of despair, made his blood sing._ I'll show her_, he thought. Half of him was convinced she would push him away. The other half was too full of Clary: her nearness, the feel of her against him — to think straight. "If you want me to stop, tell me now," he whispered, and when she said nothing, he brushed his lips against her hollow of her temple. "Or now." His mouth found her cheek, the line of her jaw: he tasted her skin, sweet-salty, dust and desire. "Or now." His mouth traced the line of her jaw and she arched up into him, making his fingers dig into the ground. Her small, panting breaths were driving him crazy, and he put his mouth over hers to quiet her, whispering, telling, not asking: "_Now_."

And he kissed her. Gently at first, testing, but suddenly her hands were fists in the back of his shirt, and her softness was pressed against his chest and he felt the solid earth give way under him as he fell. He was kissing her the way he'd always wanted to, with a wild and total abandon, his tongue sweeping inside her mouth to duel with hers, and she was just as bold as he was, tasting him, exploring his mouth. He reached for the buttons of her coat just as she bit lightly at his lower lip and his whole body jerked.

She put her hands over his, and for a moment he was afraid she was going to tell him to stop, that this was insane, they'd both hate themselves tomorrow. But: "Let me," she said, and he went still as she calmly undid the buttons and the coat fell open. The shirt she was wearing underneath was nearly sheer, and he could see the shape of her body underneath: the curves of her breasts, the indentation of her waist, the flare of her hips. He felt dizzy. He'd seen this much of other girls before, of course he had, but it had never mattered.

And now nothing else mattered.

She lifted her arms up, her head thrown back, pleading in her eyes. "Come back," she whispered. "Kiss me again."

He made a noise he didn't think he'd ever made before and fell back against her, into her, kissing her eyelids, lips, throat, the pulse there — his hands slid under her flimsy shirt and onto the heat of her skin. He was pretty sure all the blood had left his brain as he fumbled at the clasp of her bra — which was ridiculous, what was the point of being a Shadowhunter and expert at everything if you couldn't figure out the clasp on a _bra_? — and heard his own soft exhalation as it came free and his hands were on her bare back, the fragile shape of her shoulder blades under his palms. Somehow the little noise she made was more erotic than seeing anyone else naked had ever been.

Her hands, small and determined, were at the hem of his shirt, tugging it off. He pushed hers up, around her ribs, wanting more of their skin to be touching. So this was the difference, he thought. This was what being in love meant. He'd always prided himself on his technique, on having control, on the response he could elicit. But that required evaluation, and evaluation required distance, and there was no distance now. He wanted nothing between himself and Clary.

His hands found the waistband of her jeans, the shape of her hipbones. He felt her fingers on his bare back, her the tips finding his scars and tracing them lightly. He wasn't sure she knew she was doing it, but she was rolling her hips against his, making him shaky, making him want to go too fast. He reached down and fitted her more firmly against him, aligning her hips with his, and felt her gasp into his mouth. He thought she might pull away, but she slung her leg over his hip instead, pulling him even closer. For a second, he thought he might pass out.

"Jace," she whispered. She kissed his neck, his collarbone. His hands were on her waist, moving up over her ribcage. Her skin was amazingly soft. She raised herself up as he slipped his hands under her bra, and kissed the star-shaped mark on his shoulder. He was about to ask her if what he was doing was all right when she drew back from him sharply, with an exclamation of surprise. . .

_"What is it?" Jace froze. "Did I hurt you?"_  
_"No. It was this." She touched the silver chain around his neck. On its end hung a small silver circle of metal. It had bumped against her when she'd leaned forward. She stared at it now._  
_That ring—the weather-beaten metal with its pattern of stars—she knew that ring._  
_The Morgenstern ring. It was the same ring that had gleamed on Valentine's hand in the dream the angel had showed them. It had been his, and he had given it to Jace, as it had always been passed along, father to son._  
_"I'm sorry," Jace said. He traced the line of her cheek with his fingertip, a dreamlike intensity in his gaze. "I forgot I was wearing the damn thing."_  
_Sudden cold flooded Clary's veins. "Jace," she said, in a low voice. "Jace, don't."_  
_"Don't what? Don't wear the ring?" "No, don't—don't touch me. Stop for a second." _


End file.
